| |
|||
 |
|||
|
|||
|
|
Frankenstein (2007)
Jed Mercurio’s Frankenstein is a mess of half-developed ideas, but they are interesting ideas that are filmed with genuine skill and a mostly successful compulsion to make this oft-filmed tale seem fresh. I just feel thankful, even in light of the film’s narrative failure, that by the time Victoria Frankenstein (Helen McCrory) utters, “It’s alive!”, it feels like a surprising development instead of a weary cliché. Yes, that’s right: Victoria Frankenstein. In the unspecified future in which this version takes place, Frankenstein is a woman working in genetic engineering— something called the UX project, in which organs are grown for potential transplants. Victoria is a brilliant and successful scientist, but her personal life is in peril: She’s going through a messy divorce, and her son William is dying of heart disease—a key motivation for her experiments. When her superiors hesitate in approving additional research, Victoria takes matters into her own hands and decides to grow an entire, erm, “garden” of organs in a gigantic tank, and to insert some of William’s DNA in order to create a heart compatible to his disorder. Because you are watching a movie called Frankenstein, you know what happens: William’s DNA mixed with the other genetic codes create not an organ garden, but a vaguely simian, sometimes malevolent creature—called “the UX” throughout—that escapes into the countryside, terrorizes villagers, murders a few people, etc. In case you’re not sure, I’ll go ahead and clarify that turning Frankenstein into a woman is a brilliant idea: In the original novel, what partially makes Frankenstein’s unholy work so rebellious is the reversal of parental roles: Sure, Frankenstein is playing God, but he’s theoretically also trying to birth a child—something he notably never does with his fiancé/wife Elizabeth. Elizabeth has been replaced here with Dr. Henry Clerval (James Purefoy), Victoria’s ex-husband geneticist who works for a rival company. That Clerval, who wears the mad scientist glove with considerably more ease, is a threat to her research reinforces how times have changed: In this day and age, everyone is playing God, and cloning makes the original Frankenstein’s achievement a little tame by comparison. It’s getting easier and easier for a male to create life; Mercurio’s distaff version restores woman’s right to have a child that Mary Shelley took away from her, and it conversely exposes science’s more contemporary sins, still born from combining arrogance with noble ideas. For example, the opening script informs us that Mary Shelley wrote her novel during one of the blackest periods in Europe—literally. An erupting volcano darkened the sky around Geneva, where she first conceived her story. It is appropriate, then, that this version is set in a futuristic soon-to-be-wasteland, in which volcanic ash falls from the sky and the rain is blood-red. One of the elements frustrating about the script is that it never takes the time to specifically detail exactly where this ash and rain are coming from, but the vagueness also doesn’t make it a bad movie: Characters fully inhabit this world as if they know the explanation, and scientists observe the sky with a collective guilty conscience that betrays their knowledge that their entrepreneuring recklessness has something to do with the weather. Their suppressed remorse is telling enough. He’s grotesque and unfinished like the others, but he acts more like a half-evolved parasite than an articulate, demented brute. Still, he generates both sympathy and terror, and we believe every moment he’s onscreen that he is a real creature. And I appreciate that Mercurio abandons all of the visual clichés generally associated with the Monster. There’s a moment when the film nods to the old formula by briefly planting bolts in the UX’s neck; I think this happens to remind us that the UX is indeed the Frankenstein Monster. That we need reminding—that this creature seems fresh instead of tired—is a good sign that such a retold legend is working on an entirely new level. I particularly like the way that Mercurio never provides a full shot of the UX’s details; he remains cloaked and mysterious, and we primarily react to the terror that Victoria and others feel when they interact with him. Mercurio understands that after a few obligatory scenes of a monster in its full glory, we grow familiar with its hideousness and it thus grows less monstrous. The director sidesteps this problem by cleverly keeping the UX hidden from the audience, and this approach generates plenty of suspense. The film’s structure is a little more reminiscent of a typical Frankenstein film. Curiously, Mercurio uses the Universal series as its model more than Shelley’s novel: Characters like Dr. Ed Gore (Benedict Wong) and supervisor/mentor Jane Pretorius (Lindsay Duncan) will be recognizable to those familiar with the James Whale films, as will a rather derivative scene featuring a little girl by a creek. Structurally, the film retells events from the Karloff trilogy: It begins with events leading up to the creation and translates images and ideas from the first Frankenstein; it later allows the UX to escape into the countryside in scenes similar to those in The Bride of Frankenstein, and it eventually ends with the UX being recaptured, tied to an operating table, and studied a la the first act of Son of Frankenstein. Though it isn’t exactly a sign of originality, I didn’t mind the obvious homage, because the characters inhabiting them are unique in their design. Still, these fresh ideas demand a fresh narrative, and the one provided is a little too traditional and certainly hit-and-miss. The opening sequences are interesting if slow-moving, carefully building the characters and their predicaments, but the second act, in which the UX is required to act monstrous, is an awful mess that threatens to reduce this distinctive creation to a typical boogey-man that occasionally pops up to kill secondary characters. It doesn’t work, and it can’t end fast enough. The third and closing act is the strongest of the film and finds Mercurio’s compelling moral: Victoria and Clerval first prod and poke the UX as if it is a soulless organism under a microscope, only to come into contact with behavior that resembles their dead son. These scenes are well acted, touching, creepy, and surprisingly realistic; after all, how close are such developments from actually occurring in this day and age? But before they have an opportunity to come to fruition, will we make ourselves extinct with the pollution of our environment? Mercurio suggests these questions with the contrast between the deteriorating environment and the final scenes with the UX, and I’m reminded of Larry Fessenden’s assertion in The Last Winter of the earth fighting us like a parasite. It’s nice to see some intelligent horror vehicles working off this scenario; it reminds us what we should really be afraid of. These are all tremendous ideas in a film that is never boring, but I think that the script could have used another rewrite that expanded on its ideas and downplayed the narrative reliance on previous Frankenstein pictures. This movie dances on the line between a traditional remake and a fresh update, and after hundreds of Frankenstein films, it could have been a little braver in its disassociation with the established mythos. I admire the female Frankenstein and the concept of the UX, and the apocalyptic scenario is a compelling addition, but these combined elements propose a reinvention that Mercurio never quite fulfills. I wanted more of the UX—not his appearance, but his psychology—and I wanted clearer repercussions of an unwitting woman creator that the film doesn’t explore. This might be the first Frankenstein film in which the scientist accidentally creates life, and the moral repercussions of this difference vs. the intentional creation of Shelley’s hero is never fully fleshed out. Plus, I think Mercurio introduces a few subplots too many: Key characters, like Victoria’s friend/colleague Professor Waldman (Neil Person), go nowhere, and by the time the film tosses in elements involving government conspiracies, we get the feeling that the narrative has lost his way. But this Frankenstein is still pretty good in its current form. I liked Helen McCrory’s performance, which interprets this doctor as a visionary whose inability to juggle her work with her personal life leads to some poor choices. We sense that she would be repulsed by the irresponsibility of Dr. Frankenstein as played by Colin Clive, Peter Cushing, etc., without ever realizing that the only difference between them is that they have long stopped pretending to be moral, and she eventually will too. She’s a good fit in the role, with her expressive eyes and gestures that communicate both great mourning and endless thoughtfulness. And Mercurio is an effective visual director; when he’s not relying on monster-movie clichés, which he nevertheless shoots well, he tosses in clever details in the background that generates strong chills. I appreciate, for example, how he often relies on the viewer’s ability to notice fleeting but unusual set pieces, so he can change them later to create subtly jarring effects. Here’s a friendly hint: Keep a close eye on the contents of Victoria’s refrigerator. Some will complain about the ending, which is rather abrupt and sets up a showdown between Victoria and the UX that we never see. But I don’t mind that we don’t witness what happens next; Mercurio correctly knows that this is not the first Frankenstein film that we have viewed, and our familiarity with the Monster’s established mythology provides us with enough information to we can pretty much predict how this one will proceed: The UX will grow, learn, be tormented, demand a mate, seek revenge, be pursued by his creator, etc. Mercurio lets us fill in the blanks ourselves without feeling an urgency to retell too much of a story that’s probably been done to death. We should feel grateful that he’s effectively created a unique monster that doesn’t recall the stereotypes, and that he ends his movie pretty much where we came in. Cast: ITV presents an Imagine production. Written and directed by Jed Mercurio. Based on the novel by Mary Shelley. No M.P.A.A. rating; contains brief violence and implied sexuality. Running time: 90 minutes. Original British television air date: October 24, 2007 (the director’s cut, which is reviewed here, was released on region 2 DVD October 29, 2007). Questions? Comments? E-mail me: danel_the_tinman@hotmail.com |
||
